I went to some preliminary meetings for the project yesterday. Every occasion like this so far has been a dramatic demonstration of the reality of what’s happening. As things go, it was a fairly exciting task. I met with the purchasing department and with a potential vendor. Both these encounters turned out to be very cool. Through the purchasing department I met a potential student software engineer. He was asking a lot of questions, and seemed very interested. You could almost see the spark of hope spring to life within him. I tell you, that spark quickly consumed his mind, and he almost had smoke coming out of his ears. I could tell that the thought of someone building a software development laboratory on campus using Linux and all open source software was blowing his mind.

My next meeting was with the local Sun Microsystems representative. Although we originally planned on getting SunFire servers, we are reconsidering. A 64-bit architecture looks like the way to go. Sun should have a lot of interest in our project, and yesterday’s meeting hinted at that interest. I look forward to negotiating with them in the future…

All in all, it was a very intense experience sharing the project with some new people. I was proud to hear about what we are planning to accomplish, and even more excited seeing them respond with interest. We are breaking ground here, and I hope that everyday makes me feel like I did yesterday.

In a recent SlashDot story was about an article Eric Sink posted in MSDN. All rhetoric and dogma aside, I found the article interesting and inwardly stimulating. Repeating what many are now saying, including Tom Peters, the article is entitled “Make More Mistakes”. A slogan I have adopted recently is “NO FEAR!” However empowering this all may seem, Eric does drop one jewel among his valuable anecdotes. A demanding introspective caution: “There is no substitute for knowing your own abilities and limitations.”

A most valuable reminder, indeed. Me being the reflective person that I am, I could not resist taking a shot at reminding myself of my limitations. I’ve already been through my strengths, skills and abilities quite a few times since After Corporate America’s Death (ACAD). Although probably a revealing and potentially compromising confession, I feel by sharing these limitations I now know where I have to focus my continuing education program. In no particular order:

1. too trusting
2. dislike relationship politics
3. believe in fairness
4. lack organization
5. weak finishing or delivering projects
6. pride, arrogance
7. dislike administrivia
8. lack experience in building empowering relationships.

When I make mistakes on this project, I’m sure they are going to be in one or more of these areas. However, I believe there is another disclaimer that must accompany the “Fail Faster, Succeed Sooner” mentality, which is the unbreakable rule: “Never make the same mistake twice!” Yes we should learn valuable lessons from making mistakes, but more than anything we should learn never to make the same ones again. 03

One of the principles for extreme programming is metaphor. As a way to simplify how your team visualizes the project, you need a metaphor. This is a real tricky one, I’ve heard of teams using sandwich, assembly lines, containers or whatever as metaphors. What I can’t understand is how a metaphor or analogy helps a team latch onto a common solution.

In my experiences I like to refer to creating a common story as a vision. For me, vision is a good metaphor (ha, I couldn’t resist) because it describes the actual process I use to keep everyone straight. I keep everyone straight by keeping myself straight. I do this through a model of the solution I build in my mind, a vision of the solution or execution plan. Whenever I meet with my development team, I consistently refer to my mental vision to orient my agenda, my answers, and my requests. This consistency provides the anchor for the team to innovate around. All innovation is good as long as we can tie it into the vision.

This vision becomes even more powerful if I can recreate this model in the teams minds. If they share the model, then we can truly unleash our collective creative forces. This challenge is the role I believe the metaphor must fulfill. It is a tool to help me transfer my mental model of the solution to my entire team. If I can effective complete this transfer, then I feel confident that the team will deliver the solution needed.

I have learned that one of the most effective tools in transferring complex models is through the use of stories or story boards. In fact if you recall, user stories is the tool XP uses to capture the interaction between the user and the solution we will build. So why shouldn’t we also use a type of story for the project lead to communicate the process and intracies of building that solution to the project team?

I’ve never tried to identify a metaphor for the systems where I have lead the development, but I have used my internal vision and the storied I relate to communicate that vision. My challenge now is to do what I have always done, but to add on the final act of condensing my vision into a metaphor. In fact, I already have most of my internal model built, just now I need to write the stories to bring that model to life and finish with a summary of those stories in the form of a metaphor.

Well, that resolved itself pretty quickly. One of the hardest lessons we can learn is to pay attention to our gut. Those gut level feelings that keep bugging you. They won’t let you stop thinking about something, it just keeps nagging, Nagging, NAgging, NAGging, NAGGing, NAGGIng, NAGGINg, NAGGING, NAGGING. Somewhere along the line, we’ve learned to tune that nagging out. I have learned that tuning out those nagging feelings is a bad idea. A VERY BAD IDEA!

So with more thought about our little content management system dilemma. I stumbled over an awesome hack for our project. I’m positive that this strategy will get us ranked among the most active projects in sourceFORGE. I’m so confident, that I’m going to throw out some predictions. These are really off the cuff, so you can bite me if they’re wrong:

1. Greater than 0.10% activity – 02.17.04
2. Top 10,000 – 03.31.04
3. Top 5,000 – 05.12.04
4. Top 2,500 – 06.03.04
5. Top 1,000 – 06.25.04
6. Top 500 – 07.16.04
7. Top 100 - 07.25.04

The moral of this is that we are smarter than we give ourselves credit. When we listen to our inner guidance, inner voice, intuition, Holy Spirit, or whoever might speak to you through hints, notions, or silent nagging. I believe this is your smarter self trying to tell you that something is either very wrong or that you are getter nearer to a breakthrough. So the next time you feel that gentle nagging, pay attention; you might be ready to bust out and innovate your way to success.21

The transition from the warmth and comfort of COTS to open source has had it’s ups and downs. You certainly get a chilling experience from most projects. I spent almost a week now trying to get a content management system running for SNAP. We’ve had limited experience. Using our temporary hosting service is not making things any easier. But the bottom line is that I’m wondering what I’m doing. Should I be spending my time writing and planning? Is it too soon to begin developing relationships? Should I be finishing my reading backlog instead?

Certainly, if the project installs had went flawless. If administering the sites would be simple. If, if, and more if’s. I believe this is important. It is all the more important coming from the corporate IT world, where there is always a posse in one form or another to back you up. Open source is mostly a different experience. I need to live that experience. I need to witness how bad is bad. Only then will I know firsthand, what I don’t want to create with SNAP. I’ve lived the traditional experience for 17 years. Now it is time to live the open source experience and live to tell about it.

I squirm impatiently, day by day waiting for the signed contracts. That’s when the real “fun” starts. So much to remember, so much to share.

I’m currently doing research for a presentation proposal for O’Reilly’s Open Source Conference 2004. I came up with a strategy to get us into the show. Based on our experience, we want to illustrate to other open source project leads, that there was, is, and will be funds available to run their projects.

The good news, is I was right. Recently, there have been several large grants made to open source projects and universities building open source software. Many might be familiar with the famous Open Source Application Foundation and their recent grant. However, I found several other grants to Indiana University (Yeah, go Hoosiers!) and the University of Michigan.

With the recent announcement by President George W. Bush and his “Jobs for the 21st Century” there is likely to be much more money available for creative open source project leads.